President Donald Trump so desperately wanted to keep his chats with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin secret that he never told any of his senior administration officials and literally took notes from his interpreter and swore that person to remain silent.
As we all know, Trump has some sort of sick fealty to Russia and Putin that is currently under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and will be a major topic of multiple probes by House Democrats in Congress.
Recently, the New York Times revealed that the FBI opened an investigation into Trump in May 2017 out of fear that he is working for Russia, a move that had to have been approved by the Justice Department using strong evidence to warrant such a probe since the subject is the sitting president.
Now the Washington Post is piling on the revelations by reporting on Saturday evening that Trump has gone to extraordinary measures to keep his talks to Putin a secret.
According to The Washington Post report:
“President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.
“Trump did so after a meeting with Putin in 2017 in Hamburg that was also attended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. U.S. officials learned of Trump’s actions when a White House adviser and a senior State Department official sought information from the interpreter beyond a readout shared by Tillerson.”
That begs the question: What the hell did Trump say to Putin that he is so desperate to keep from the public? For that matter, what did Putin say to him?
But that’s not all, Trump not only silenced his interpreter, he refused to tell his own top administration officials what was said between the two, even going so far as to keep the details out of classified files:
“The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States’ main adversaries.
“As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump’s face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years.”
And that’s a big deal that should alarm the American people and every public official and lawmaker working in Washington DC.
If Trump is truly working for Putin, and Putin was giving Trump orders, that’s definitely something he would want to keep hidden. And it’s exactly why Democrats need to haul that interpreter into Congress to testify under penalty of perjury about what he heard and wrote down in the notes. This is a matter of national security and a serious lack of transparency. Trump usually does not care about revealing classified information. He once revealed classified intelligence to the Russians inside the Oval Office and revealed the faces and identities of undercover Seal Team members in Iraq. Whatever was said during these conversations must be so damning to Trump that he is willing to do anything to keep them secret, which is not surprising since he only cares about protecting himself.
It’s time for Republicans to demand details and take the threat Trump poses to our nation seriously instead of desperately remaining complicit with him. Because giving aid and comfort to a traitor is also a crime against the United States.
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